Robert Fisk is the Beirut-based correspondent for the London Independent newspaper. He's spent the last 3 decades covering the Iranian Revolution, the Iran-Iraq War, the Persian Gulf War, the conflict in Algeria and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Now that he's exited Iraq, we reached him recently and asked how this, most recent war compared with past wars he's covered.

We do have migratory birds where I live, but as we don't have severe, snow-laden winters, most of the birds still hang around in winter. Therefore, I have to stop and think for a bit when people mention, like HAL, birdsong in winter <s>.

There's a lot of things going on with the geo/earth electromagnetic field; some complicated physics and astronomy made worse by ?human? (human demons is more like it) interference for nefaric reasons. At any rate, a bird-watcher friend has noticed them losing their way these past few years because their instincts depend on these fields (the reason that animals flee an impending earthquake--they sense the prior disruption in the field.)

We have had one of those winters where we hardly saw the ground. There was a consistent snow cover all season and we just finished our last(?) snow about 2 weeks ago and finally all melted. I guess it has been a refuge for these small birds. Now they are into the trees, but I guess they will be back. It's a better bet that they will be back as oppposed to a bad guess that I might be here.

I had a robin in my garden once...vicious little blighter it was. They're territorial and fight the other birds off. I was happy when the bloody thing left...the variety was much better after that. Then all the little birds disappeared and now all I get is crows, who eat my crops and wild boar who come and trample on them.

Robins are territorial. If you have a mating pair take up
your property early in the Spring, they stay and will fight
for your lawn/garden. You may as well give them names
when they arrive in the Spring. They are also among the
world's most successful species.

Originally posted by zhurnalist My greatest pleasure is to go up to my country place, wake up to the sound of birds, cook in my clay pot on my stove ore go to the forest to light a fire and roast a chicken, go to the tavern and drink wine with the locals and hear stories about plants and the weather...and pigs...